Here’s to Gene Roddenberry and his Wagon Train to the Stars idea. Here’s to NBC for giving him a second chance at a pilot, a rarity. Here’s to Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Sulu, Chekov, and of course Uhura. Here’s to Paramount for giving the Original Series crew 6 movies.

Here’s to Gene again for launching the Next Generation. Here’s to seven years and four movies of Captain Picard, Riker, Data, Worf, La Forge, Troi and Crusher.

Here’s to Berman and Piller and Jeri Taylor for creating Voyager. Here’s to the crew’s seven year odyssey home, to Captain Janeway, the first female captain on TV, and Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris, Torres, Kim, the Doctor and Seven of Nine. (And Kes for their first three years.)

Here’s to Berman and Brannon Braga for showing us what came before Kirk’s time with Enterprise. Here’s to Captain Archer,T’Pol, Trip, Reed, Phlox, Sato and Mayweather.

And here’s to J.J. Abrams for wanting to direct the Kelvin timeline. Here’s to Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof for bridging the gap between timelines with Spock Prime. Here’s to Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, John Cho and Zoe Saldana for inhabiting such iconic characters and making them your own over three movies. Here’s to Simon Pegg and Doug Jung and Justin Lin for Star Trek Beyond. Here’s to a Star Trek universe with LGBT onscreen representation!

And here’s to Bryan Fuller and the Discovery crew, whoever you are! I can’t wait to meet you.

Thank you for 50 years of exploration and stories. Thank you for inspiring a fandom and so many to pursue science as their career. Here’s to the next 50 years. Live Long and Prosper.